Assembling Self

A piece from here a piece from there. I pull the parts together where, the facts I've found and those still gone are segments searched and sought so long. Together joined and linked I find, small questions answered in my mind. Assembling self and as I go, not really half, but never whole.

Assembling Self

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

For
those of you who are wondering what the unicorn reference is in
regards to adoption it is a term regularly used by those of us well
versed in adoption experiences to describe someone who sees adoption
in a purely positive light while denying the pain and trauma that it
stems from for adoptees and biological parents. “Unicorns”
refuse to see the dark underbelly of adoption including the fact that
adoption is a billion dollar industry, that many adoption agencies
are in business to make large sums of money off innocent babies, and that adoption is based on an adoptee's loss of their
family of
origin and a biological mother's pain of relinquishment. That
pain
and loss is something most endure for a lifetime. Adoption is a
permanent solution to an often temporary situation.

There
are so many subjects that will be talked about during National
Adoption Awareness Month
but the one I will address at the present moment during
the #flipthescript campaign
is the “Adoption not abortion” movement. I've been blogging for
years about adoption and this last year after contributing to other
blogs and adoption anthologies I pretty much had run dry of anything
else to say that I hadn't covered previously.
However, there are many times I just
can't sit by an allow someone to spew false information about
adoption especially when so many of us have fought for years to
educate the world about the reality
of adoption from our own personal experiences and tragedies.

Recently
I ran into a pro-adoption/anti-abortion
thread of my friend's Facebook page. I read and immediately felt
that hot flush of anger and my blood pressure rising quickly. I
had to chime in.

The
conversation revolved around the fact that someone who had zero
connection too adoption other than “she knew people who adopted”
(which means you really know nothing).
The
sentence that triggered me the most to speak up was something to the
tune of “You can adopt babies for nothing and many times the
government will pay you to do so.” Not wrong but OH SO wrong!

Actually
the cost of adoption is quite steep and there are lengthy waiting
lists for HWIs (Health White Infants) of up to 10 years. In fact it
can range anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 and
upwards.
Ethnic babies are less costly to adopt approximately $15,000 and
upwards.

If
adoption is not expensive then why are there so many adoption
fundraisers being held for prospective adoptive families? Yah.

I
recently did a research report for my job for a family wanting to
adopt. Three agencies had gone out of business and two others no
longer facilitated infant adoptions and only assisted families with
adopting from the foster care system. One of the agency social
workers told me “We no longer do infant adoptions because it's so
heart breaking to watch parents wanting to adopt wait with little
hope or have a birth mother change her mind.” Inside I am yelling
“YES ALRIGHT FAMILY
PRESERVATION!”

Almost
half of adoptions
are
done
through private attorneys and
can
be even more expensive. Think adoption doesn't operate as baby buying or child trafficking? It is
legal in Texas to promise anything to a birth mother and considered a
“gift” to help her out in a difficult time or circumstance with
an unplanned pregnancy in exchange for her relinquishing her child to that family.

I
had a friend contact me 10 years or more ago and tell me that her
friend's daughter was pregnant at the age of 15 and considering
adoption. She wanted to keep the baby but felt pressure to
relinquish considering she had no education, no job, and felt unable
to provide for a child. She said each time the girl told the family
no they upped the ante. First it was a car, then added
a
college education, and
then
a house. Those things can look very promising
to a girl that
has
little and
is in adifficult situation.

The
adoption was promised to be open but I let my friend know to tell
this girl that if she relinquished her rights that adoption can close
at any point in time and there is no recourse for
her
to change anything. The adoptive parents will have every right to
keep that child from her until it's 18. And, by that time who knows
what the adoptee will have been told, or believes, or will feel about
her biological family.

The
girl decided to keep the baby and from what I hear is happy with the
decision she made. I heard the adoptive parents were livid and
couldn't understand why she would choose such a difficult path in
life when they could have smoothed it over for her and made things a
lot easier. Ummmmm because it's her flesh and blood and she didn't want
to “sell” it?

We
shame poor young or single women who become pregnant into relinquishing yet we provide tax
breaks and benefits for families that adopt. Prospective adoptive parents post "Go Fund Me" or church based campaigns to help with the cost of adopting. Yet, people are constantly up in arms because poor pregnant women and women with babies receive government assistance. Seems pretty
hypocritical to me. But, when agencies and lawyers are making tens
of thousands of dollars off every adoption I can understand why they
would promote such pro-adoption propaganda.

Most
cultures don't give their children away and instead are kept within
the family and taken care of by grandparents, aunts or uncles, or
siblings and cousins.

The
pro-adoption advocate also spit out the “Do you want these children
to grow up hungry and in poverty?” First, that's conjecture that
this will in fact happen and second then why can we not help families
with temporary assistance and education resources until they get on
their feet? Why is adoption the first option and not the last?

Also,
I know many children who grew up in poverty that turned out to be well
educated functional adults. Poverty is not the worst thing that can
happen to a child. Adoptive families are not immune to job loss and
poverty or divorce like any other family. Adoption is NOT a magical
cure to an unplanned pregnancy.

Are
there parents who do not want their children, absolutely. Are their
children who need to be removed from abusive and neglectful homes, yes
there always will be. But, let's not make adoption a simple band aid
cure for all families struggling to support and raise their children.
Parents
who want a child are NOT entitled to one despite what they or others
think or despite a family's circumstances. Children are not commodities to be redistributed to fulfill the wants and desires of others.

One
of my good friends grew up dirt poor. There wasn't much in the house
but they made ends meet and
yes lots of hand me downs, few of any restaurant meals, or expensive
vacations. But, there
was a
lot of
love which
is what children need most.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

I see this
person staring back at me and wonder who it is I see?Are these her
eyes?Is his face the same?Do I look like
them?What are their names?Mirrors like
pictures tell thousands of tales but the stories told have always failed.In lending me
the slightest clues to endless questions and intangible truths.

Mirrors.
Mirrors are normal and every day parts of life. They are everywhere and
especially with the current trend in selfie taking. Mirrors
are not only a reflection of who we are now but a reflection of the
people we come from.

My former husband used to tell me that "You have never
passed a mirror you did not like." That is not
only not true, it is possibly one of the most "untrue" statements
about me that has ever been made. I actually don't
like mirrors. I don't know if I ever have.

My obsession with mirrors is not vanity it's a constant search for validation of
who I am and where I come from, of which I get none. Perhaps briefly
maybe shortly for a moment when a glance finds me in good
light and clothes and reflects an image I like to see. But, that is not
often and less often considering my age.

Discussing age recently with my friend, that seems to be an
increasingly more discussed subject, she stated now every time she looks into
the mirror she sees her mother.I
stopped cold with that.How I wish
people knew how much adoptees long for that.Too see anyone that resembled them young, old, or in between.

Children grow up looking into faces of those them resemblance.Most have siblings along with grandparents,
aunts, uncles, cousins and extended family members bearing the same facial
features, personality traits, and even habits, likes, and dislikes.Biological family members can certainly be quite opposite but adoptees are void of any tangible evidence
they physically belong in their adoptive family.There is an extremely important missing part in
the family bonding process.This is not to say
that deep bonding between adoptive children and adoptive parents/families can’t happen
however, it can present a problem that can become a life long issue.

This is what I knew growing up. I asked about my mother who had relinquished me and was told she was very young, very tiny, and very pretty.I was lucky to be born with good genes but I don’t know who they come
from.My mother, father, grandparents,
who is it this athletic build I inherited come from along with the habitual lip
biting all of my children also inherited including the nose I’ve come to hate
for most of my life?None certainly come
from my adoptive family who couldn’t be anymore different than I am. Not many people truly know what it is like to live your life founded on and steeped in a complete mystery and searches that can lead to brick walls, lies, illegalities, and secrets kept. My children and their children are also in
the dark about the genetic background and they’ve lost out as well.

Why is it that genetics are whitewashed in adoption as
unimportant but vital to nonadopted persons who are building family trees with
ancestry tracing and genealogical research online?Why is it that adopted persons are expected
to give up all knowledge of where they come from and the genetic factors that make
them who they are?When will it be time
when ALL adoptees can obtain the same information that every other citizen of
this country has a right to? Adoptees are not blank slates to be written on by other families, we come genetically wired and coded before we are even born.

I will never have a right to force relationships with my
biological family but I have a right to that option as others do.I do have the right
to have my original birth certificate and biological family history and information.All
adoptees do and we always will.

The last articulately written adoptee article I read at the Washington Post has created more controversy with comments from nonadopted persons and than I have seen in awhile. And of course, it's the usual advice to adoptees in varying degrees of "Get over it", "Be grateful you weren't aborted", "biological families suck too be glad you escaped", "Get a life", "Create your own path", "You need therapy/are mentally ill" and some really struck me as particularly hypocritical. Why, well let me explain.

Getting a life and creating our own paths is exactly what many adoptees are attempting to do every day. When most adoptees search for biological family and speak out how being adopted affects them, and their families we are expressing our emotions and desires to do something with our lives to bring peace, closure, and wholeness. I see that as fairly normal, healthy, and mentally sound not to mention vitally important for many adoptees. If not, then why the genealogy fervor over the last few decades?

Adoptees usually do not have the basic family history and genetic knowledge at birth and or access to it later as adults that others are privy to. The informative genetic playing field we enter on to in life is not the same level course as nonadopted persons. We are given handicaps, disabilities, and barriers the nonadopted world can't begin to imagine, obviously. It's a given for the majority of nonadopted persons that they know who their mother, father, sisters, brothers, grandparents, and generations spreading back and forward are. They have photos, stories, historical documents, family heirlooms, and all kinds of tangible evidence and facts about themselves through the people they come from. What anyone does with that information is their right. However it's not the same rights adoptees are given.

I am a 55 year old adult adoptee about to embark on my 5th court petition for access to my original birth certificate. Why would I keep continuing to pound my head against a brick wall you say and not move on? Because I can't and I won't. And I hope my persistence will pay off eventually (judges and social workers have to retire at some point) not only for myself but for adoptees are there with me and will follow. Although I realize that at my age and with people dying taking knowledge about my adoption situation to their grave, I can't allow myself to give up seeking, searching, and trying to find out where I came from. I just can't believe, although the evidence is overwhelmingly monumental
that nonadopted persons think adoptee are "lucky", how anyone could not
fathom not knowing who your mother and father are, where your brothers
and sisters are, and waking up every day to look into a mirror at a
virtual hereditary stranger.

If you as adoptee never feel the need to look back, to know biological family, or have the desire to explore in any capacity family history nothing wrong with that. But, adoptees who don't feel as I and others do, for nonadopted persons labeling and judging adoptees, to the industry of adoption and systems that continue to expect adoptees to accept less than other citizens, STOP. We've already conformed for far too long.

You want us to get over being adopted? Ummmm, no although adoptees can learn to live with it and quite well and successfully. How? Give every adult adoptee their OBC, honest answers to questions they ask if you have them, and the support they need to put the pieces of their own personal life puzzle together into as cohesive a whole as is humanly possible. Level the playing field for adoptees by removing unnecessary obstacles, legal restrictions, and constraints in their quest to simply gather important and valuable truths about their lives. Abolish lies, half truths, and the falsification of documents in adoption. Then, and only then, do adoptees who want the truth(s) have a chance to grow into complete and authentic human beings.

I will still not be grateful, because seriously who would be just to finally achieve the same legal status as the next person who never had to fight to get it, but I will be equal. With that I can then move on with my life and into whatever future I want to have. Until that time I live in limbo.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose
someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it
because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new
people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of
someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death.
This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit
it. Why would I want them to?”
~Jeanette Winterson "Written on the Body"

If I told you I lost my mother at birth the usual reaction is one of sympathy. If I told you I was adopted the usual reaction is "WONDERFUL". It is the same thing. ~Adoptees

You took away my family.

You took away my home.

You erased away my history now most of it is gone.

What gives to you the right to do this injustice unto me?

How can you be so blinded?

How is it you can’t see?

You’re stealing from the innocent are you so unaware?

You’re playing God with all our lives did you think we
wouldn’t care?

Who gave to you the authority to decide how we should live?

Who granted you this power?

It was not theirs to give.

You treat us as possessions, we are not yours to own.

How did you get the notion you can tell me where is home?

Do not dictate to me about how I should live my life.

Or who I can call mother, then take away my rights.

The answers to life’s questions you say I need not know.

You’re asking the impossible the questions only grow.

What it is I am asking for is for you to understand.

Until I have the answers I can not know who it is I am!

The angry adoptees are at it again!Ruining the feel good wonderful promotion of
adoption during National Adoption month!I woke up this morning to a blog about “The War on National Adoption Awareness Month” from an
adoptive parent with all kinds of adoptive parent responses as usual commenting
on adoptees speaking so ugly about adoption through the #flipthescript campaign.Ummm yeah, and here is more of why we
are.

I wrote the above poem about fifteen years ago and although
geared toward the system of adoption and the archaic policies, laws, and
adoption procedures, it can apply to those who continually dismiss adoptees and
focus on what adoptive parents have to say instead. I do get how people don’t get it, the whole ultimate reality
of adoption.The underbelly, the dark
side, the reality adoptees speak of is hard to hear.I know most people are missing the point in
what adoptees are saying. The point IS that adoption is based on loss and that
loss for adoptees is usually undermined, ignored, and dismissed.

If we were promoting a "War on divorce" we would
be widely supported. Both adoption and
divorce are the severing of families permanently (and many times rebuilding
through step families as in adoptive families) but of course adoption is celebrated because the focus
is always on the win-win for the adoptive family and never about the demise of
an original family. If you first acknowledge and recognize the magnitude of
loss adoptees suffer THEN you can help them rebuild their lives into something
more positive." Yet again, people are not hearing the voices of experience, those of adoptees.

And then there was THIS part of the blog that TRULY makes it
evident that adoptive parents and others aren’t listening or really hearing
what adoptees are saying.

“I’ve heard an adoptee who was adopted from another country
say her family was waiting for her back in “her country.” Where was her family
when she was in the orphanage?”

Again, adoption permanently attempting to sever the ties of
an adoptee’s biological family without recourse and discounting the fact that
they will ALWAYS have another family be they absent, or across the world, dead,
whatever the case or scenario might be they exist!Even IN an orphanage adoptees still have a
family “back there”.Generations of them
in fact!Descendants and into the future,
adoptees do not deserve to be expected to not want to know about, hear about,
or reconnect with their families of origin.

The pain and loss divorced
children, orphaned children, or abandoned/neglected children experience is
widely recognized and often children are counseled to help them over come these traumas. Adoptees
experiences via adoption are mostly discounted and trivialized. We as adoptees are
criticized, ridiculed, called perpetual victims for voicing our emotions, feelings, and pain adoption has caused us. The hypocrisy that exists in
adoption is blatant to adoptees and the rest of the world writes us off and white
washes all of it and repaints it as a lack of gratitude.

I always have wondered about the
two weeks before I was adopted, where I was, who I was with, what kind of care
I received. In 2000 at an AAC conference I heard a older nurse speak about how
adopted children were taken at birth and isolated in the hospital from the
other babies. Hospital staff could not get them to stop crying and it was regular
procedure to give them drugs to tranquilize them. I tear up to this day
thinking about how horrific that whole scenario is.Now of course open adoption is promoted and
children are placed immediately and yet again that original loss is dismissed.

I never deal in absolutes because
life is not black and white nor is adoption totally good or totally bad.There are always going to be children in need
of good homes, however adoption should always be a last resort but more than
often it is not.Even adoption from foster care
systems often siblings are separated, names are legally changed, and original family
members are lost to one another forever.Our system of adoption in this country resorts to adoption first instead
of family preservation and support.

One of the greatest experiences
for me ever was an AAC conference in 2000 with hundreds of adoptees in
attendance. After five days I didn't want to leave it felt like "home"
amongst so many that completely and immediately understood me, how I felt,
without a word or explanation.I knew
then it was never “my issues” with adoption, is IS the issue of adoption itself.

Until the time the voices of
those who truly experience adoption firsthand is heard first and not last,
adoptees will continue to suffer from the long term ramifications of the
judgment that haunts them in the “real” world of the nonadopted.

“From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen.
As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone.
And all I loved, I loved alone.” ~Edgar Allan Poe

Sunday, May 4, 2014

A silhouette without a face these ghosts I chase from place to place.
Shadows playing hide and seek elude my call evade my reach.
They come and go within my dreams looming near but never seen.
Just when I think they've gone away I realize they are back to stay.
Haunted by who I might be, in the mirror this face I see.
It is mine but comes from where?
I find no peace, only blank stares.
Few clues to riddles lost in time.
Can't capture what I can not find.
Pursuing what I can't deny, the phantoms of days long gone by.

I've been busy. It's been a good productive busy but still hectic. I have not had the time to write as I would like to. I've jotted down some notes over the last few months that I wanted to expand upon because no matter how far you attempt to get from adoption it is always there and usually in your face. It's quite invisible to nonadopted persons but as blatant to adoptees as the noses on our faces. All it takes is a quick change in perspective to see it.

As adoptees we all know and realize you can never get away from adoption. And, most of us don't want to since we have spent so much of our lives unable to express how we feel or how it has shaped and molded who we really are. We need to feel it, see it, dive down deeply into it to discover what it is we need to do about it. But there is a point a vacation would be nice. And many of us take breaks from activism, reform, education, search and support along the way. However, the world usually doesn't give you long before there it is, in your face, reminding you that being an adoptee is who you are and will always be.

I was in Walmart a couple of months back, yes Walmart it's the only store within walking distance I can get to, and doing my usual grocery shopping. I turned the corner and there she was. A woman about 4' 11" tall weighing around 100 lbs. How can I size a person up that quickly? And secondly, I'm sure nonadopted people wonder why would I? Because I am adopted. And, because the only identifying information I have about my mother that she gave me in her non-id letter through the adoption court is nearly exactly that. And, because I have been searching for her my whole life.

I also know her hair and eye color as well. Not many women are that petite and every single time I come across them I engage them in conversation if I can and scan their faces closely for resemblances. Little are these women aware that I am almost oblivious to our conversations because there is a whole internal dialogue going on inside me that if anyone knew they'd probably turn and run and or immediately notify security.

The hair color of this woman matched too. Unfortunately, she was turned from away from me and I could not see her face directly. I pretended to look at items on the shelves on either side of her and moved as unstalkerish (yes adoptees get to make up words we need our own language) as possible to get her to turn towards me. She was probably around my age and as my brain absorbed this information my first thought was "possibly a sister?" I know I have at least two siblings from my mother's side.

Unfortunately, nerves got the best of me and I walked on pushed my cart down the aisle and went about my day swallowing the lump in my throat and breathing slowly to stop my heart from pounding so heavily in my chest. If anyone asked I'd just attribute the shaking to too much coffee. I should have approached her probably but who REALLY knows how unnerving it can be to be confronted by a perfect stranger in a Walmart no less. But, this is the life of an adoptee in search forever traveling down the path of "who am I?"

Adoption is ubiquitous to adoptees. We are constantly told to get over it, don't think about it, or it doesn't matter. Adoption is the fabric our hearts and bodies are stitched and sewn from.

Recently I've began to delve into my favorite fiction authors. Even when I escape into fantasy there it is chapter two, main character, and a girl no less. Orphaned at birth, adopted and abused, sent to an orphanage, and taken in by a family member who became her guardian. Almost too close to home and definitely enough to bring me back into reality.

Soap operas, forget it, not one around I don't think that doesn't have an adoption story line. Horror shows, always look to the antagonist to more than likely be an adoptee given up at birth returning to exact revenge on the parents that abandoned them. Pinterest, social media sites, and online news even adoption in some way, shape, or form is within view.

One day I'll be a ghost to my children and those who have loved me. But, I will have be a "real" ghost in the capacity that I will have a face, and a voice, and eternal memories that will carry on when I am gone. Adoptees need to have that as well, or at least the chance at tangible proof of the ancestors and heritage they will always be a part of, and that will always be a part of them.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

I've been reading and commenting on an article about the New Jersey bill that will allow adoptees the right to their original birth certificate. A bill that was passed by the house and the senate but vetoed by Governor Christie last year. It is more than frustrating to attempt to educate people who refuse to listen or even consider the adoptee voice and experience. Especially when adoptees ourselves advocate for equal rights, to the same legislators, and it continually falls on deaf ears and closed minds.

Some comments I've encountered recently regarding Adoptee rights:

"Be happy with what you have." Ok, then let's have the government kidnap your family, ALL of them, and hide them from you in some remote inaccessible area and if you beg and plead long and hard enough and pay enough money they might, just MIGHT, let you know where they are. Of course, they might not too that is their right. You have none. Oh btw, be happy about it.

"No one needs identification these days you can vote without an ID." Don't confuse identification with identity. Adoptees deserve their original identities they were born with that is printed on their original birth certificate. What they do with that is their right just as it is for every other citizen. Period.

"What if these biological parents are "bad" it should be up to the adopted parents themselves to tell the adoptee if they feel it is right for them to know." And, what if they are not? What if they are wonderful? What if they want contact? What if they don't? What if they are deceased? What if there is a whole biological family to welcome them? This is what most people get confused, the difference between rights and relationships. What if's don't matter in relation to OBC access, rights do.

"These women are going to have abortions instead of adopting if they can be found." Can we please get OFF the correlations between adoption and abortion FINALLY??? There is not a fact nor a statistic anyone has (or ever has had) that open records will 'cause more women to have abortions. In fact, the opposite is actual true just look at states like Alaska and Kansas who have never closed adoption records. Or, to Oregon who opened theirs over a decade ago. Adoptees are receiving their original birth certificates in other states as well that have opened and no traumatic events are occurring and no tragedies are mounting because of it. Can we be done with this lame argument now?

I understand adoption is difficult to comprehend for those who have not
experienced it themselves. And, it is not the same as having a relative
who is adopted or knowing someone that is adopted. What adoptees do NOT understand is the frequent dismissal of our requests to be heard and understood. As if we were whiney little children who really don't know what they want or are need of and instead are and sent off for a nap, a time-out, or are simply ignored.

I really can not wrap my brain around how people fight against us in this really simple basic request for our original birth certificates. And, how adoptees still are continually denied the same basic human rights as other citizens. And worse, chastised for asking!

DENIED - By The Government

I plead though they ignore my cries.
The record's sealed is their reply.
Time and time again I ask.
I'm told to put it in the past.
I can't get them to try and see.
They have what belongs to me.
I beg for truth but no one hears.
It only falls upon deaf ears.
I get no matter how I try.
The same stone cold response DENIED.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

In the quiet of my soul there dwells, a story that is left to tell.
A life that lives beneath, so still awaiting its release.
Hiding there for many years beneath the layers of my fears.
Afraid to recognize the pain not knowing where to lay the blame.
Tucked away, I feign a smile.
But the pressure grows and all the while.
I dream one day, we'll make them see this burdensome road, this strange journey.
For if our voices join together ceasing not, nor quitting ever.
I believe united we'll reclaim the loss of histories and names.
And, that's enough until the time we'll change their hearts, transform all minds.
So cease not in this quest for truth nor give up on your search for proof.
What we're told that matters not can't be ignored, nor be forgot.
I pray for days and nights sometimes and probably 'til the end of time.
That relief is somewhere close in sight so I can lay to rest this fight.
Returning to truth and honesty at last our spirits will be set free.
And reaching out we'll heal all those lost and lonely wounded souls.

I've been told I'm consumed and obsessed with adoption. That, I am an angry adoptee. That I need to get over adoption as everyone has issues them from life experiences and to just leave it all in the past. The problem is that being adopted can not all be in the past. It it is very much a part of adoptees in the present and future too. Just like you can't be unborn, you can't be unadopted. Our pasts as children, the people who influenced our lives growing up, the genes and biological we come from, are very much a part of our now.

People every day talk about the circumstances and situations that have shaped and are molding their lives. Just scroll through Facebook (as we almost all do ;) ) hundreds are discussing and sharing about loved ones who are gone, posting pics from childhood, High School, college, weddings, it runs the gamut from A-Z. If we could just put everything in the past then there would be no wonderful memories and reunions! But, unfortunately with the good parts of our past come the difficult ones too.

Recently, I read someone who is not adopted comment on how much someone thinks about adoption and the hurt and pain that it brings up. And how it's easy not to think about something you "just don't think about it". And then this person goes on to list every wrong someone has done them over the last twenty plus years. Ummmm, a little (understatement) contradictory?

For many adoptees, we've had decades of bottled up, unidentified, and confusing, bewilderment we have felt without anywhere safe to express it. Misunderstood and perplexed because the knowledge of where we came from, the very foundation or our lives is gone, and we are told to be happy and bury the underlying despair and sadness we feel and have felt. For us it's like opening an unread book and beginning on chapter four, and the previous chapters we are not allowed to have. It will never be a complete story, and that's what adoptees deal with, incomplete lives.

For adoptees there seems to be different rules when it comes to reactions and emotions about being adopted that we are required to adhere to. The term "victim mentality" gets thrown about a lot. Many of us talk about it because there have been no guide books or mentors, no one who understood us and could help us, and instead it became even more confusing when our questions and emotions were dismissed and labeled wrong. And many, many of us, speak continually and publicly in tireless efforts to change the system of adoption and educate the world as to what these changes can, should, and need to be.

There is a difference in being angry about something, and being an angry person. There is a difference in speaking about something to vent, be understood, and supported, and allowing yourself to become a victim because of it. There is a HUGE difference in writing, speaking, sharing, and encouraging others to do the same about adoption, because there is power in numbers, and there is empowerment for individuals.